How 'Game of Thrones' author George R.R. Martin went from chess captain and journalism professor to a reported net worth of $15 million

George R.R. Martin began his writing career at a young age.
Charles Sykes/AP

• George R.R. Martin was already a successful author when he began to write "A Song of Ice and Fire" in 1991

• He has been writing stories since childhood

• Before his writing career took off, Martin was a chess tournament director and a journalism professor

In the summer of 1991, a startling scene popped into George R.R Martin's mind.

A boy watched a man get beheaded, and then found some dire wolf pups in the snow.

"It just came to me so strongly and vividly that I knew I had to write it," he told Rolling Stone.

So Martin began to write "Game of Thrones," the first installment in the series that would become "A Song of Ice and Fire." The book was published in 1996 and sales were "solid," according to the Guardian.

However, Martin's idea would ultimately snowball into a huge success. As of 2016, the Guardian reported that the books have sold 70 million copies. The series also launched HBO's smash hit "Game of Thrones" in 2011.

Martin was born September 20, 1948 in Bayonne, New Jersey, to longshoreman Raymond Collins Martin and his wife Margaret Brady Martin.

The "R.R." portion of his artistic name dates back to his upbringing. The first "R." stands for Raymond, his father's name and Martin's middle name. The second stands for Richard, his Confirmation name.

He was also a major bookworm. "Reading. That was the sport I was good at," Martin has said of his childhood.

Growing up, Martin thought that thought he might become a superhero or an astronaut.

"I took archery once, figuring I could be Green Arrow but I couldn't hit the target, so that was a drawback. That was not working," he said at a 2014 Comic Con panel, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

That same year, the writer graduated summa cum laude with a BS in journalism from Northwestern University. He remained at the school for another year to complete an MS in journalism, too.

During this time, with the US in the midst of the Vietnam War, Martin applied for conscientious objector status. He said that he would have fought in WWII against the Nazis, but he "didn't think America had any business in Vietnam," he told the Strombo Show.

He was surprised to receive the CO status, telling the Strombo Show that his local draft board believed that COs would be punished by the community and branded as cowards. "So they ruined my life," he joked in the interview.

While his stories might be renowned for their brutality, Martin's anti-war views have influenced his writing. "If you're going to write about war and violence then show the cost. Show how ugly it is," he said in an interview with Strombo.

Instead of fighting in the war, Martin did alternative service in Chicago with AmeriCorps VISTA, an anti-poverty program.

To support his fledgling writing career, Martin also got involved in the 1970s chess scene and worked as a tournament director. He had started playing as a child, and went on to become captain of Northwestern's chess team.

He began teaching journalism at Clarke College in 1976, and became the school's writer-in-residence from 1978 to 1979.

At a party in 1975, Martin met his future wife Parris McBride. Martin was engaged to Gale Burnick at the time, whom he later married. After Martin and Burnick divorced in 1979, McBride moved to Santa Fe to be with him.

McBride and Martin married in 2011. The Telegraph reported that the ceremony — a medieval-inspired affair — took place in their living room. The couple still resides in Santa Fe.

He decided to pursue writing full-time in 1979. By the time Martin had become a story editor for CBS's "Twilight Zone" reboot in 1986, he had published five novels, two novellas, and several short story collections.

In 1987, Martin signed on to be a story consultant for "Beauty and the Beast," a fantasy television series that re-imagined the classic fairy tale as a dark police procedural.

He rose through the ranks to become co-supervising producer. Martin told the Hollywood Reporter that he learned a lot from his time on the show, and loved the cult hit itself. "Being able to bring that to television, to a mass audience, was great," he said.

Martin was working on a science fiction novel called "Avalon" when the scene that inspired "Game of Thrones" popped into his head in 1991. Inspired, he set his other story aside and began to crank out the fantasy epic. "Basically, I wrote about a hundred pages that summer," he told Rolling Stone.

Originally, "A Song of Ice and Fire" was supposed to be a trilogy. However, the tale quickly sprawled out of control, with dozens of point of view characters and twisting plots. Today, fans are still waiting on the release of "Winds of Winter," the sixth volume in the seven book series.

Today, the story's timeline in the television adaptation has blown past that of the books. So don't spoil show for Martin — he's apparently a couple of episodes behind on the show's seventh season.

"The most important thing for any aspiring writer, I think, is to read!" Martin said in a post on his official website. "And not just the sort of thing you’re trying to write, be that fantasy, SF, comic books, whatever. You need to read everything."